Our burden as White people is to work to highlight and expose, as much as we can, the many ways that the system in which we live is fundamentally, at its core, racist. This burden is ours not because anything in particular is our individual fault, but because it is our responsibility, and we are up to the task. (To put it another way, you obviously never owned slaves, and you might have been born after the end of de jure segregation, but don’t get too smug about all that.)
It is also unfortunately true that a great many of our fellow White people are much more likely to listen and understand this issue if the message comes from one of us.
This is why I don’t like the story of the good samaritan. Everyone likes to think of themselves as the person who sees someone beaten and bloodied and helps him out.
That’s too easy.
If I could re-write that story, I’d rewrite it from the perspective of Black America. What if the person wasn’t beaten and bloody? What if it wasn’t so obvious? What if they were just systematically challenged in a thousand small ways that actually made it easier for you to succeed in life? Continue reading
